The Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society, written fifty years ago this June, is the most ambitious, the most specific, and the most eloquent manifesto in the history of the American Left. It is also, at just over 25,000 words, undoubtedly the longest one. But it had to be lengthy to accomplish its aim—to propose an entire "agenda for a generation." Consider the variety of topics about which Tom Hayden and his fellow delegates to that SDS meeting held at the FDR Camp in Port Heron, Michigan, had intelligent and provocative things to say: moral values, American politics, the U.S. economy, the nation's intellectual and academic life, the labor movement, the cold war, the nu-clear arms race, the anticolonial revolution, and a vivid description of why the black freedom move-ment was so pivotal to the birth of a new Left. All this was informed by a sensibility attuned to what one might call the "national psychology." And that's just a summary of the first half of the statement.

Recommend

Additional Information

ISSN

1946-0910

Print ISSN

0012-3846

Pages

pp. 83-89

Launched on MUSE

2012-03-22

Open Access

No

Project MUSE Mission

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.